Midcoast man rescued after injury by falling tree

MORRILL, Maine — Rescuers used a backboard Thursday afternoon to carry an injured man 300 feet out of the woods and to medical help, which included transport to Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor on LifeFlight helicopter.

Travis Marriner, 33, address unavailable, apparently had been cutting wood just before 4 p.m. with his father in the woods off Higgins Hill Road in Morrill when the accident occurred.

“The call came in that he had been hit in the head by a tree,” said Morrill Volunteer Fire Department Chief Pat Scribner.

Marriner’s father, who had a cell phone, called for help, Scribner said.

Responding crew members trudged a quarter-mile through the woods, using a pickup truck as far as it would go and covering the rest of the ground on foot. They found Marriner to be conscious and responsive, although having clearly suffered head trauma and fractures to his left leg below the knee.

“He could talk to us … but there was a lot of blood around his nose and mouth,” Scribner said. “One eye was swollen pretty bad.”

An official from EMMC in Bangor said Thursday evening that Marriner’s condition still was being evaluated.

The Waldo County Sheriff’s Department, Belfast Fire and Rescue and the Maine State Police also responded to the call.

Lt. Jason Trundy of the sheriff’s office said at the scene he didn’t know yet exactly what had happened. Marriner and his father were the only two in the woods and the father already had left to join his son in Bangor, Trundy said.

“We won’t really know until we get a chance to talk to [Marriner],” Trundy said.